PHILADELPHIA — Andrew Bynum won’t play for the Sixers this season, not as long as he is in pain, not even if it would help them into the playoffs, not even if it would help them win once they were there.

He’ll play later, next year, the year after. He’ll play some other time, but not this year, not even if someone were to pay him close to $16.9 million, which the Sixers are doing. Doesn’t bother him, either.

“I don’t feel that at all,” he said.

The Sixers — weak, wimpy, worthless on the issue all season — won’t yell, terrified that they will displease their 7-foot, 285-pound mistake so much that he might not consider them an option for his next destination. That’s their choice and they have to suffer with the won-lost ratio that such appeasement has yielded. Both of his knees are injured, and the coaching staff insists it is satisfied with they way he has gone about his recovery. Their position, take it or leave it.

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But by spending the season out of uniform, then all but announcing this week that he won’t require one at all, Bynum has assured himself that, should he ever return to the Wells Fargo Center in a visiting ensemble, he will go to the top of a dubious list. That would be the list of athletes perceived to have disrespected Philadelphia.

He’ll be prominent on some other lists, too. He’ll join Jeff Ruland on the worst-ever trade list, Chris Gratton on the most-wasted-money list, Leo Rautins on most-useless-Sixer list, Leon Stickle on the worst-villain list. Impressive lists, all. But this one carries a professional life sentence. Once a player player big-times Philadelphia, he has entered a big-time contest that he cannot win.

So if Bynum doesn’t play a game for the Sixers, and returns in coming years, he is in a club that includes:

n J.D. Drew: He said he wouldn’t play for the Phillies, then didn’t, not even after they made him the No. 1 pick in the draft and were willing to pay him accordingly. Now, even his brother Stephen is booed in Philly.

n Scott Rolen: He didn’t play the day they gave away his T-shirt, rejected what was the most lucrative contract in Phillies history, moped until he was traded, then called St. Louis baseball heaven.

n Kobe Bryant: Remember the theme of this list. It’s players perceived — accurately or not — to have disrespected Philadelphia. And when Bryant promised to cut the Sixers fans’ hearts out before the 2001 NBA Finals, he was done. Never mind that he once wore his father’s old Sixers jersey around town during the All-Star Game. Perception rules.

n Ricky Watters: He wasn’t the only athlete ever to take a play off. But he was the most visible one to arrogantly admit as much when after choosing not to catch a pass in traffic during his first Eagles game, he shrugged, “For who? For what?” That went over large at the Vet.

n Lance Parrish: After the Phillies made him the priciest free-agent acquisition of 1987, his wife reportedly wore a Detroit Tigers cap to the first home game. He never overcame the wardrobe malfunction.

n Sidney Crosby: Why doesn’t he like the Flyers? “Because I don’t like them,” he will say. Flyers fans, just so he knows, don’t like him, either.

n Terrell Owens: He played one season with the Eagles, wanted more money, then eventually became a Dallas Cowboy. When he returned to the Linc, fans literally carried mock gravestones around the joint with his name.

n Donovan McNabb: With his attitude, with his smirks, with the way he carried on after helping the Washington Redskins beat the Eagles once, he could have made the list even without having played so miserably in a Super Bowl.

n Billy Wagner: He wrongly accused Phillies fans of booing him when his pitches didn’t register triple-figures on the ballpark radar gun. They were groaning with him, not at him. And he knew it. Soon, he learned how real booing sounded.

That’s nine. Bynum is pre-approved to be No. 10. He belongs in the club. Oh, does he belong.